


Canaries in the Mines

by zeitheist



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Gen, Implied Torture, Italics, Protectiveness, Robot Feels, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 02:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeitheist/pseuds/zeitheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Songbird brings Elizabeth back to the tower out of love, not malice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Canaries in the Mines

“I’m sorry!” Elizabeth cries, and the pain in her voice is enough to give The Songbird pause, its fist raised over Booker’s prone form. “I’m sorry! Take me back. Take me home.”

The Songbird doesn’t understand _sorry_ , but it knows _home_. _Home_ is a shell of reinforced steel and a series of locked doors. _Home_ is a library, a bedroom, and a bathroom, a world so small that nothing can creep in unnoticed. _Home_ is comfort through familiarity.

Elizabeth must be kept _safe_ ; _home_ is somewhere that the Songbird knows, and that makes it _safe_.

It’s gentle with her. If it was angry with her, then it isn’t now. If it felt any resentment towards Elizabeth for leaving, for running, then it’s long gone. It doesn’t remember the past and it doesn’t contemplate the future. Even the existence of the False Shepard, which had vexed it mere moments before, is forgotten as if he had never existed. Elizabeth is _safe_ and the Songbird is content. That is all it needs to know.

Elizabeth cries when the Songbird takes her back. It doesn’t understand, assumes that it is hurting her because what other reason could there be? The Songbird has experienced loss, but it cannot fathom grief. Elizabeth does not quieten, even when the Songbird softens its grip. The tiny machinations of its brain skip like a jammed gear: _hurt protect safe, hurt protect safe_. Were it still human, the Songbird might feel desperation. It tries singing to her instead, tries to soothe her using the most comforting concept it knows: _Home. Home_.

 _Home_ is _safe_ and _safe_ is Songbird and so Songbird is also _home_.

 _Home_ , it whistles to her, clasping her tighter to its leather-and-metal body. _Home_.

Comstock is waiting for them in the ruined tower, but he is familiar and so also part of _home_. He waits while the Songbird sets Elizabeth down, still crooning to her in dumb animal panic. _Home. Home. Home._ Elizabeth hasn’t stopped crying, but when she sees Comstock she gasps in something other than grief. She presses close to the Songbird’s hide, and it knows that something has frightened her. _Not safe! Not safe!_

It screeches in a fury, optics clunking, scanning the rubble of the library with a searchlight of yellow. It is alert for any hint of danger, but its search reveals only Comstock, nothing more.

“My dear,” Comstock says, “I think it’s time you and I had a talk.”

The Songbird does not recognize the device in Comstock’s hand, though it has heard its song a thousand times before. It does not react when Comstock begins to play. It does not anticipate the inevitable sleep, the shackles of its mental conditioning.

_It does not fear what it cannot understand._

__

The Songbird rests; not quite asleep, but not quite awake, more like a powered-down machine, using the bare minimum of power to keep itself aware. The Songbird is listening for the call of the music, which it cannot move without. Whether or not it is physically able to do so is irrelevant: the Songbird _will not_ move until the whistle calls it forth. To do otherwise would be unthinkable.

Not even to save itself. Not even to save Elizabeth.

It still hears her hurting.

Some instinct inside the Songbird responds to the sound. Internally, the Songbird screams. It rages. The bird or the cage? More like the bird inside the cage. The Songbird’s fury is an animal, so single-minded in its pursuit of escape that it cares not when it smashes itself to death against the bars. In this case it is the urge to protect Elizabeth, terrible and all-consuming, which the Songbird will strive for at the exclusion of everything else.

But Elizabeth's pain is not the call of the music, come to awaken the Songbird to its duty. It is not enough to move it.

Elizabeth does not stop screaming, and the Songbird’s anger does not abate. It becomes like a piston loosened inside a machine which, still-spinning, destroys everything around it in arcing crunches. It is relentless. It is limitless. It is an itch that the Songbird can’t scratch, an enemy it cannot reach. It is maddening. Every time Elizabeth cries, the Songbird’s wings twitch as if in reflex, the metal frames creaking ominously.

 _Hurt_ , it thinks, in a broken-glass whirlwind of thoughts. _Hurt, protect. Hurt, protect. Hurt, protect_.

It has no concept of the passing of time: it only knows when Elizabeth is there, and when she is not. When she is not, she screams and pleads and cries, and the Songbird whips into a frenzy inside the iron prison of its own body. When she is, Elizabeth cries softly and in pain, and the Songbird is only slightly less wroth for having her there. Sometimes her voice speaks to him from nearby, and the Songbird stops and listens anxiously to her agony.

 _I wish I could hate you_ , Elizabeth says, _but you’re the only one here who isn’t hurting me_.

_I wish they would stop._

_I wish Booker would find me._

The words mean little to the Songbird. However, it learns to discern one from the rest. _Booker_. It doesn’t understand the meaning. All it knows is that Elizabeth says _Booker_ in the same way she once said _home_ , and so _Booker_ becomes the same as _home_ , becomes the same as _safe_.

When the day comes that Elizabeth’s screams finally stop, the Songbird feels no relief. One moment Elizabeth is screaming and it is alight with fury; the next she is not, and the Songbird is calm. 

It doesn’t remember the weeks spent going mad with the suppressed urge to protect. Elizabeth calls the Songbird to her, and it doesn’t remember the weeks of torture, or all the times she curled up at its splayed feet. It doesn’t recall who hurt her, or why, or the ways in which it facilitated the process. It feels no guilt, it feels no remorse. It feels no resentment. When it sees the man standing behind Elizabeth, the Songbird flashes red not out of any recognition but because it does not recognize the man’s face, and that makes him _stranger_ makes him _threat_ makes him _not safe--_

“Booker!” 

_Booker_ , the Songbird thinks. _Booker_ is _home_ is _safe_. 

There is still a human mind inside the Songbird. It is small and mutilated, a mind very much reduced, and it is not quite capable of connecting _Booker_ with the unfamiliar figure in front of it. But it recognizes the sound that _safe_ makes when it’s in Elizabeth’s voice, and that alone is enough to give it pause. Though it will never remember it, the relentless heat of its fury during Elizabeth’s torture had softened something inside it, allowed it to re-shape into something new. When you take the flame away the metal will not recall the heat, but regardless it will never be the same shape as it was before. 

It was a gentle process, barely noticeable. Just a dent in the metal. A wrinkle in the fabric. 

But the Songbird knows now that the tower is no longer _home_. No longer _safe_. Above all else the Songbird must ensure that Elizabeth is _safe_ ; now the meaning of _home_ has shifted, and the only reference the Songbird has left is itself. _Home_ is _safe_ and _safe_ is Songbird and so Songbird is _home_. If it cannot take her back to the tower, back to _home_ , then the Songbird itself will have to be Elizabeth’s _safe_. 

Booker speaks to Elizabeth then, and he sounds angry. The Songbird cares little about the cause of Booker’s fury, but it is only Elizabeth’s unconcern and her small hands on the Songbird’s beak that keep it pacified when Booker starts to shout. It listens to them argue, half-cognizant of the intruders advancing towards the airship and aware that they are why Elizabeth has called the Songbird to her. It is here to fight for her. 

The men who made it had scoffed at the idea that the Songbird could feel anything as complex and human as _love_ for Elizabeth. Now, the Songbird nuzzles its face into Elizabeth’s tiny hands for the sheer contentment of the act, and feels a devotion that would level entire cities in her name. 

What is love, if not that? 

“I need you to help me,” Elizabeth whispers. “One last time. Will you do it?” 

The Songbird doesn’t understand goodbyes, but it knows how to keep Elizabeth _safe_ , right down to its metal bones. 


End file.
